The youngest palm fossil record in Tibet suggests that there was no high Tibetan Plateau until the Neogene.

Orogenesis in northern Tibet determines the vegetation and plant diversity of eastern Asia by intensifying winter precipitation.

Yunnan, in southwestern China, straddles two of the world’s most important biodiversity hot spots (i.e., a biogeographic region that is both a reservoir of biodiversity and threatened with destruction) and hosts more than 200 fossiliferous sedimentary basins documenting the evolutionary history of that biodiversity, monsoon development, and regional elevation changes. The fossil biotas appear modern and have been assumed to be mostly Miocene in age. Dating has been by cross-correlation using palynology, magnetostratigraphy, and lithostratigraphy because numerical radiometric ages are lacking. Here we report the first unequivocal early Oligocene age (33–32 Ma) of a section in the Lühe Basin (25.141627°N, 101.373840°E, 1890 m above mean sea level), central Yunnan, based on U-Pb zircon dates of unreworked volcanic ash layers in a predominantly lacustrine succession hosting abundant plant and animal fossils. This section, located in Lühe town, is correlated with an adjacent section in the Lühe coal mine previously assigned to the upper Miocene based on regional lithostratigraphic comparison. Our substantially older age for the Lühe town section calls into question previous estimates for the surface uplift and climate history of the area, and the age of all other correlative basins. The modernization of the biota ∼20 m.y. earlier than previously thought overturns existing concepts of vegetation history in southwestern China, and points to Paleogene modernization of the biota in Yunnan and associated Asian biodiversity hot spots.

Docynia has been treated as a separate genus or merged into Cydonia or Docyniopsis. Our phylogenomic evidence from 797 single-copy nuclear genes and plastomes confirmed the sister relationship between Docynia and Docyniopsis. By integrating the phylogenomic and morphological evidence, we propose to accept a broad generic concept of Malus and merge Docynia into Malus. Three new combinations are also made here: Malus delavayi (Franch.) B.B.Liu, M. indica (Wall.) B.B.Liu and M. longiunguis (Q.Luo & J.L.Liu) B.B.Liu.